I was interested to see that you posed the question on X, asking why documentaries are worse now than the ‘70’s and 80’s. I don’t have X, so I’ve not see the responses. Your conclusion that we are just getting stupider might be true; to a point. However, I find documentaries are now almost unwatchable. I have just given up on a BBC documentary on Shakespeare, despite Dame Judi Dench and Brian Cox being interviewed in it.
There is always a message on race, sexuality or politics subtly portrayed in the cast of actors used or unsubtly by the selection of left wing academics or the narrators script giving their left wing world view. War documentaries sanitise films of conflict. The World at War, for example did not. I watched it as an eleven year old, when it was first broadcast and talked about it with my parents and teachers. It showed the reality of war.
We are being treated like children who must be told what to think.
Thinking about Woodbridge I always wonder to what extent the neighbour’s you will probably have factor into property prices and how innately people know this? Like a lot of things, good schools, safety, etc are basically affected by this but I’ve never seen it much specifically in the way people break down why a property is worth lots or not. Maybe identifying a place where people have yet to identify sound neighbours is a good way to identify a good investment in property as daft as that seems.
If you ever go back to Cumbria (Westmorland) again and want to satiate your interest in Quakers I’d recommend a trip to the Quaker tapestry in Kendal if you’ve not been. It was made in the 1980s/90s (started by children then adults joined in) and tells their history. Very interesting place to see and doesn’t really get many visitors (I only went when back home on holiday a few years ago). £9 for adults but free for Children.
"In fact perhaps now is a time to visit - there seem to be a lot of holiday deals to India going, especially in the north-west."
More than 20 years ago, during a previous India-Pakistan, "Hey, we have nukes!" fuss over Kashmir-Jammu, my unemployed husband was offered a contract job in that part of India. I confess that the amount of money they were offering led me to say, "You could at least think about it ...".
Quakers are hard to count, despite - perhaps indeed because of - their astonishing appetite for detailed membership statistics.
According to the latest official figures, there are 10,764 members. There are also 7,173 "attenders" (people who regularly attend Quaker worship but are not formally in membership). The overall total is therefore 17,078. There is little formal distinction between members and attenders (though some roles tend in practice to be reserved for members); but coming into membership is usually regarded as denoting a firm commitment to Quakers, and therefore as significant. Attenders are cohabiting with Quakers; members have moved from cohabitation to marriage.
The difficulty with the official statistics is that there's no definitive criterion as to how regularly you need to attend in order to be counted as an "attender", so the official Quaker statistics are to some extent built on sand. If you nevertheless have an appetite for such things, see here:
The Quaker movement dates to the 17th century, and is Christian in origin: but British Quakerism has no formal creed, and hence encompasses an astonishing variety of religious commitment.
The approach to politics can be more dogmatic. It is hard work (and possibly unsustainable) being a gender critical Quaker. See here:
Re Alice Evans. I do not care for her. Like a lot of feminists she cannot accept that anything that favours men often favours women- or might just be a good itself.
Also are for example women acting as procurers in rural provinces, women working in drug factories. Women collecting, extortion money from day care centres if these women are killed in intergang conflicts are these the same as if a nun and her 18 year old novice shot down at in a soup kitchen in Tumbes
Latin America is just violent. 1 in 5 dollars earned in the continent spent is spent preventing crime. Or the same population as the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea adding Sheperds Bush is murdered every year
Peru has a romantic drama about an upstanding security guard who wins the heart if the rich girl he protects
Latin/Meso America draw a circle from N.O LA incorporating Kingston Jamaica and ending in well Chiclayo Pope Leo's old diocese. . This is a probably the largest visible racial frontier zone on Earth. Europeans-Indios- and Blacks, and all the resulting mixes. It is very easy to other people there.
Why did I end the circle at Chiclayo- because that is a good place to mark the end of Inca rule. The Inca state hanged, and taxed. I would have ended the circle at Quito- Quito is under attack from Venz, and Colombian gangs who have been encouraged to go south. If you follow the current president of Colombia on Twitter - he was posting articles about Pope Leo demanding Fujimori apologise to his victims
I was at Mass in London, for the homily the priest outlined the difficulty of getting piped water in the provinces of Peru. (It was not the current Pope) This is true- I could not fail to noticed he had not mentioned the transit strike in Lima. Which was due to crime. Aren't sins of comission worse than omission Father.
I keep thinking of the bus driver murdered. I took the bus back from Lima Norte to the Airport
I wonder if it was the same man I was speaking too
Go back to the President of Colombia. The rumor is the Peruvian civil service unions and officials want a left wing government, They are refusing to prosecute people and forcing the PNP to turn people loose. The Venezulean government are openly committing murder in Chile. Until the Venezulean ulcer is lanced this will continue
Like me, the current Pope had a Carte Extranero - My soul now lives in mortal fear that the Pope having probably had to travel annually into Lima to get his immigration status confirmed Once heard me and my extranged wife having one of our more involved discussions in the Migrations office on Espana Avenue, in Lima. Or my daughter bit him as a toddler
We were discussing dual nationality on here- Prevost had to get a Peruvian passport before he could get a bank account-to rest that money in his accout, before he could pay for a warm bottle of Pepsi with Yape- Yape Cash app. ( That's an over simplification but not so much )
Speaking of how western officialdom cannot get the roads mended- here is the Pope complaining about potholes in Chiclayo
That observational piece by Mr Skulthorp about what is called a Woke Coup's in deep England's towns and villages is interesting.
One dogma of refuge for despairing conservatives, according to what you might call the social conservative Crisis Theory, appears to be that, eventually, the 'internal contradictions' of Liberal Progressivism mean that Progressive voters will be faced with the palpable fruit of their mis-allied ideals. They will see and reconginse and admit their error , in sackcloth and ashes.
Except it nver happens like that.
"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not often seen" a man admit he has been an outright fool.
In Lambeth, for instance, the pressure on housing due to low-wage immigration is now such that overdevelopment is on everyones lips. The Cooperative societies and 'Watermelon' Green lefties are now faced with the desructon of local amenities and nature reserves, to meet housing cenralised housing targets, due to the deliveroo economy.
Surely they will put 2 and 2 together, one thinks? Apparently not.
Near me a local disused theatre, whose rejuvention has been a long time darling project of the well-meaning bien pensant constituency, has just been bought over the heads of the conservationists by an African Mega-Church.
Similarly the protected view from the top of the Common is now to bne blighted for ever by new build flats.
The tortured repsonse to these transaction has been almost memsmerising.
It's good on Leslie to bring attention to Walter Ong, but I can't help but feel that this is a form of liberal cope on his part: my ideology of choice has nothing to do with the current turmoil; it's all post-literacy, don't you see? It's just like Jonathan Haidt blaming everything on screens.
I know these round-ups aren't the heart of your Substack, but I always look forward to them. When they were "Sunday West", I used to read them on my phone as I strolled to church on a Sunday morning, which I thought of as a charming bit of retro-futurism. But who knows, if Silicon Valley is turning to Christianity, maybe it will be the future in both senses!
As for the political future of this country, Reform could either form the next government or shrivel like the Poujadists did. But if they do the former, it will be because of that word Ganesh singles out: "order". I've been saying for a while to as many of my (mostly left-wing) friends as are willing to listen that the average voter is considerable to the right of the mainstream consensus on immigration and crime... as well as opposed to a constellation of things exemplified by the trans issue (as it touches on children) but more widely apparent in aspects of the state education system: essentially, the conviction of a self-satisfied elite that it knows better how to raise kids than their own parents do.
However, I suspect Reform will use these culture war issues to attain power before governing as a bunch of libertarian Thatcherites - an economic posture that I don't think currently has much support in this country. In short, I think a Farage-led administration will / would make itself very unpopular in short order. Heaven knows what happens next!
I should do more of them, my original plan was every other weekend, but they end up taking much more time than a regular post.
On the subject of order, I plan to write something about why illiberalism is winning globally. I suppose I would consider myself in a liberal in the broader sense, but if you look at various shades of illiberalism - China, El Salvador, UAE and Hungary - they have all proved pretty effective at basic quality of life stuff, which liberal countries are clearly failing at. being able to take public transport without encountering frightening mentally ill men hassling you for change is quite a big thing.
I agree Reform, if they won (still not likely tbh) would not be up to this task.
Historically speaking, increased influxes of "nomads" are not a sign of a higher stage of civilization but rather of a descent into a Dark Ages of some kind!
Partially due to correlation, not causation. Periods of large scale migrations were (pretty much without exceptions as far as known history goes) launched by climate disasters-- usually abrupt and lasting cold spells often due to major volcanism. Crop failures and famines stressed even the most capable and functional of civilizations, sometimes to the point of collapse. The migrations were frosting on the cake (though sometimes they were absorbed and ultimately civilized-- the Turko-Mongol invaders of China and the Middle East, the Vikings and Magyars, etc.) History's most massive migrations to date were those of European peoples to the New World and eventually to southern Africa and Australia. And those too were launched in part by climate problems-- e.g., the Little Ice Age. But while they were of grim consequence to the natives, they certainly did not cause a collapse of civilization-- quite the opposite in fact.
I was interested to see that you posed the question on X, asking why documentaries are worse now than the ‘70’s and 80’s. I don’t have X, so I’ve not see the responses. Your conclusion that we are just getting stupider might be true; to a point. However, I find documentaries are now almost unwatchable. I have just given up on a BBC documentary on Shakespeare, despite Dame Judi Dench and Brian Cox being interviewed in it.
There is always a message on race, sexuality or politics subtly portrayed in the cast of actors used or unsubtly by the selection of left wing academics or the narrators script giving their left wing world view. War documentaries sanitise films of conflict. The World at War, for example did not. I watched it as an eleven year old, when it was first broadcast and talked about it with my parents and teachers. It showed the reality of war.
We are being treated like children who must be told what to think.
Thinking about Woodbridge I always wonder to what extent the neighbour’s you will probably have factor into property prices and how innately people know this? Like a lot of things, good schools, safety, etc are basically affected by this but I’ve never seen it much specifically in the way people break down why a property is worth lots or not. Maybe identifying a place where people have yet to identify sound neighbours is a good way to identify a good investment in property as daft as that seems.
If you ever go back to Cumbria (Westmorland) again and want to satiate your interest in Quakers I’d recommend a trip to the Quaker tapestry in Kendal if you’ve not been. It was made in the 1980s/90s (started by children then adults joined in) and tells their history. Very interesting place to see and doesn’t really get many visitors (I only went when back home on holiday a few years ago). £9 for adults but free for Children.
"In fact perhaps now is a time to visit - there seem to be a lot of holiday deals to India going, especially in the north-west."
More than 20 years ago, during a previous India-Pakistan, "Hey, we have nukes!" fuss over Kashmir-Jammu, my unemployed husband was offered a contract job in that part of India. I confess that the amount of money they were offering led me to say, "You could at least think about it ...".
Does he regret not taking it?
No, but things might have turned out very differently if he had!
Quakers are hard to count, despite - perhaps indeed because of - their astonishing appetite for detailed membership statistics.
According to the latest official figures, there are 10,764 members. There are also 7,173 "attenders" (people who regularly attend Quaker worship but are not formally in membership). The overall total is therefore 17,078. There is little formal distinction between members and attenders (though some roles tend in practice to be reserved for members); but coming into membership is usually regarded as denoting a firm commitment to Quakers, and therefore as significant. Attenders are cohabiting with Quakers; members have moved from cohabitation to marriage.
The difficulty with the official statistics is that there's no definitive criterion as to how regularly you need to attend in order to be counted as an "attender", so the official Quaker statistics are to some extent built on sand. If you nevertheless have an appetite for such things, see here:
https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/tabular-statement-yearly-meeting-2025
The Quaker movement dates to the 17th century, and is Christian in origin: but British Quakerism has no formal creed, and hence encompasses an astonishing variety of religious commitment.
The approach to politics can be more dogmatic. It is hard work (and possibly unsustainable) being a gender critical Quaker. See here:
https://thismagpiemixture.blogspot.com/2025/03/how-should-quakers-talk-about-sex-and.html
True, but whatever their size, their influence in modern leftism is still impressively large.
The most famous Quaker in history being Richard Nixon has to sting a little extra then!
Thanks for marking my card about David Goodhart's substack - I have now subscribed.
Re Alice Evans. I do not care for her. Like a lot of feminists she cannot accept that anything that favours men often favours women- or might just be a good itself.
Also are for example women acting as procurers in rural provinces, women working in drug factories. Women collecting, extortion money from day care centres if these women are killed in intergang conflicts are these the same as if a nun and her 18 year old novice shot down at in a soup kitchen in Tumbes
Latin America is just violent. 1 in 5 dollars earned in the continent spent is spent preventing crime. Or the same population as the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea adding Sheperds Bush is murdered every year
https://www.lavanguardia.com/peliculas-series/series/mi-amor-el-wachiman-207880/actores
Peru has a romantic drama about an upstanding security guard who wins the heart if the rich girl he protects
Latin/Meso America draw a circle from N.O LA incorporating Kingston Jamaica and ending in well Chiclayo Pope Leo's old diocese. . This is a probably the largest visible racial frontier zone on Earth. Europeans-Indios- and Blacks, and all the resulting mixes. It is very easy to other people there.
Why did I end the circle at Chiclayo- because that is a good place to mark the end of Inca rule. The Inca state hanged, and taxed. I would have ended the circle at Quito- Quito is under attack from Venz, and Colombian gangs who have been encouraged to go south. If you follow the current president of Colombia on Twitter - he was posting articles about Pope Leo demanding Fujimori apologise to his victims
I was at Mass in London, for the homily the priest outlined the difficulty of getting piped water in the provinces of Peru. (It was not the current Pope) This is true- I could not fail to noticed he had not mentioned the transit strike in Lima. Which was due to crime. Aren't sins of comission worse than omission Father.
uters.com/world/americas/lima-grinds-halt-perus-transit-workers-demand-action-against-crime-surge-2025-04-10/
I keep thinking of the bus driver murdered. I took the bus back from Lima Norte to the Airport
I wonder if it was the same man I was speaking too
Go back to the President of Colombia. The rumor is the Peruvian civil service unions and officials want a left wing government, They are refusing to prosecute people and forcing the PNP to turn people loose. The Venezulean government are openly committing murder in Chile. Until the Venezulean ulcer is lanced this will continue
Or we get a Brasilian Pinochet
Where do you get that 20% figure from?
The Economist- Grok says its a bit of an oversimplication but not much.
An American Pope you say? Well that is correct but not in the way you meant
https://x.com/_Mizumonosss/status/1920564467265388715
Like me, the current Pope had a Carte Extranero - My soul now lives in mortal fear that the Pope having probably had to travel annually into Lima to get his immigration status confirmed Once heard me and my extranged wife having one of our more involved discussions in the Migrations office on Espana Avenue, in Lima. Or my daughter bit him as a toddler
We were discussing dual nationality on here- Prevost had to get a Peruvian passport before he could get a bank account-to rest that money in his accout, before he could pay for a warm bottle of Pepsi with Yape- Yape Cash app. ( That's an over simplification but not so much )
Speaking of how western officialdom cannot get the roads mended- here is the Pope complaining about potholes in Chiclayo
https://x.com/OutPeru/status/1920608263676068069
Peter Thiel himself is also a Christian.
That observational piece by Mr Skulthorp about what is called a Woke Coup's in deep England's towns and villages is interesting.
One dogma of refuge for despairing conservatives, according to what you might call the social conservative Crisis Theory, appears to be that, eventually, the 'internal contradictions' of Liberal Progressivism mean that Progressive voters will be faced with the palpable fruit of their mis-allied ideals. They will see and reconginse and admit their error , in sackcloth and ashes.
Except it nver happens like that.
"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not often seen" a man admit he has been an outright fool.
In Lambeth, for instance, the pressure on housing due to low-wage immigration is now such that overdevelopment is on everyones lips. The Cooperative societies and 'Watermelon' Green lefties are now faced with the desructon of local amenities and nature reserves, to meet housing cenralised housing targets, due to the deliveroo economy.
Surely they will put 2 and 2 together, one thinks? Apparently not.
Near me a local disused theatre, whose rejuvention has been a long time darling project of the well-meaning bien pensant constituency, has just been bought over the heads of the conservationists by an African Mega-Church.
Similarly the protected view from the top of the Common is now to bne blighted for ever by new build flats.
The tortured repsonse to these transaction has been almost memsmerising.
It's good on Leslie to bring attention to Walter Ong, but I can't help but feel that this is a form of liberal cope on his part: my ideology of choice has nothing to do with the current turmoil; it's all post-literacy, don't you see? It's just like Jonathan Haidt blaming everything on screens.
Reading this deliciously bleak post, I feel vindicated in my decision not to travel to the UK and spend the summer and autumn at my university campus!
And instead, remain in Dubai! There is so much anger and negativity in old England!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/clywgz0342xo.amp
Pope Adrian IV came to power at a pretty contentious time in the Italian Peninsula as well.
There was even an attempt to revive the Roman Senate in his time!:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune_of_Rome
I know these round-ups aren't the heart of your Substack, but I always look forward to them. When they were "Sunday West", I used to read them on my phone as I strolled to church on a Sunday morning, which I thought of as a charming bit of retro-futurism. But who knows, if Silicon Valley is turning to Christianity, maybe it will be the future in both senses!
As for the political future of this country, Reform could either form the next government or shrivel like the Poujadists did. But if they do the former, it will be because of that word Ganesh singles out: "order". I've been saying for a while to as many of my (mostly left-wing) friends as are willing to listen that the average voter is considerable to the right of the mainstream consensus on immigration and crime... as well as opposed to a constellation of things exemplified by the trans issue (as it touches on children) but more widely apparent in aspects of the state education system: essentially, the conviction of a self-satisfied elite that it knows better how to raise kids than their own parents do.
However, I suspect Reform will use these culture war issues to attain power before governing as a bunch of libertarian Thatcherites - an economic posture that I don't think currently has much support in this country. In short, I think a Farage-led administration will / would make itself very unpopular in short order. Heaven knows what happens next!
I should do more of them, my original plan was every other weekend, but they end up taking much more time than a regular post.
On the subject of order, I plan to write something about why illiberalism is winning globally. I suppose I would consider myself in a liberal in the broader sense, but if you look at various shades of illiberalism - China, El Salvador, UAE and Hungary - they have all proved pretty effective at basic quality of life stuff, which liberal countries are clearly failing at. being able to take public transport without encountering frightening mentally ill men hassling you for change is quite a big thing.
I agree Reform, if they won (still not likely tbh) would not be up to this task.
Perhaps because people around the world are not fond of what Jacques Attali prophetically called a "nomad society" towards the end of the Cold War:
https://londonspeakerbureau.com/speaker-profile/jacques-attali/
Historically speaking, increased influxes of "nomads" are not a sign of a higher stage of civilization but rather of a descent into a Dark Ages of some kind!
Partially due to correlation, not causation. Periods of large scale migrations were (pretty much without exceptions as far as known history goes) launched by climate disasters-- usually abrupt and lasting cold spells often due to major volcanism. Crop failures and famines stressed even the most capable and functional of civilizations, sometimes to the point of collapse. The migrations were frosting on the cake (though sometimes they were absorbed and ultimately civilized-- the Turko-Mongol invaders of China and the Middle East, the Vikings and Magyars, etc.) History's most massive migrations to date were those of European peoples to the New World and eventually to southern Africa and Australia. And those too were launched in part by climate problems-- e.g., the Little Ice Age. But while they were of grim consequence to the natives, they certainly did not cause a collapse of civilization-- quite the opposite in fact.